The Start of Me and You (9 page)

“So,” my dad said, pulling the passenger’s side seat belt over his chest. “Are we on speaking terms?”

“Nope.” I could barely look at him because my mind refused to compute: he’s dating
Mom
. Did they go on actual dates? Hold hands? I recoiled.

My mom had dropped me off at my grandma’s, but it was my dad’s turn to pick me up for dinner at his place, making it impossible to avoid him. I’d already dodged a phone call from him because talking about their relationship made it real. And I
liked
my denial. It was cozy here, in the land where divorced parents just didn’t touch each other.

I drove with rigid posture, square shoulders and chin held high. My dad stayed quiet for a few minutes, honoring my request for silence.

“The dating thing is bad enough,” I said, finally. “But it really, really sucks that you kept it from me.”

I could see him nodding in my peripheral vision.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”

I blinked. My father, famously verbose, was leaving it at that. If he was aiming for reverse psychology, it worked. I felt like a pessimistic brat.

“I know you don’t mean for it to affect me.” My shoulders drooped. “But it does.”

“I know that, Paiger,” he said, a sigh escaping. “I do. But your mom and I are going to do everything in our power to keep this as normal as possible.”

I wrinkled my nose. “What does that even mean?”

“Whatever you want it to mean. You and Cameron will still come over for dinner twice a week and stay with me when your mom’s out of town. We don’t have to talk about it. I won’t come over to the house at first if that will make the transition easier.”

My mom gave me a similar speech earlier that day, only hers had more parenting magazine phraseology: “defined boundaries” and “respecting everyone’s comfort levels.” In reality, I was the only one with any level of discomfort, but I had earned it—all those nights, squinting my eyes in fake sleep while their bickering voices carried into my bedroom.

“You know,” my dad said, “when you fall for someone, it’s involuntary, kiddo. Even when it’s for the second time with the same person. You’ll see someday.”

Also involuntary: my scowl. I was the one in high school.
I
was supposed to be giddily going on dates and looking hazed over with happiness—not my middle-aged parents. All I had were a few hopeful conversations with Ryan Chase and a list of things that might make me feel happy again. It usually took being with my friends or my grandma to make
me feel happy. But last night, when I took my list down to only four? It was the happiest I’d felt, being alone, in a long time. I needed the satisfaction of crossing off another item—it had felt so charged, so definite.

I glanced over at my dad, desperate for a subject change. “So … I’m thinking about doing QuizBowl at school. It’s like a game-show-type trivia thing.”

He sat up straighter. QuizBowl was squarely inside my dad’s wheelhouse. I’d heard stories of his victories at bar Trivia Nights in college, and he tried to get Cameron and me to play Trivial Pursuit Junior for years when we were little. “Really, kiddo? That’s
great
!”

Once I saw the excited look on his face, I knew I really had to do it. My parents watched me suffer so much sadness that they couldn’t take away. I think I wanted them to see that I was doing better these days. And maybe I wanted to make myself see it, too.

Chapter Seven

“All right,” Ms. Pepper called, after the bell rang. “This isn’t the first week of school anymore. Time to get down to business.”

The chattering died down, and she picked up papers from off her desk.

“On the first day of class I told you that I had two goals for this year,” she said as she passed a handful of papers down the first row. “For you to learn about one another and literature. This in-class assignment will serve as a refresher on Shakespearean themes you’ve previously studied in
Romeo and Juliet
and
Julius Caesar
. It will also help you get to know a fellow classmate, as you’ll be working in twos. You’re not in kindergarten, so pair yourselves off. I’ll trust you to pick someone you don’t already know well.”

Max poked me in the back before Ms. Pepper even finished talking. “Wanna work together?”

Morgan was already chatting with Maggie Brennan. Ryan Chase was too far away to ask, and I didn’t want to get stuck without a partner.

“Sure.” I spun in my seat to face Max, noticing the faint imprint across his cheeks and forehead—the remnant of chemistry lab goggles.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, not wanting to embarrass him.

The first section read: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

“Full Name,” I read aloud. “Is it Max
well
? Or Max
imillian
?”

“Neither. Just Max.” His mouth pulled into a half smile. “Max Oliver Watson.”

“Paige Elizabeth Hancock,” I said, watching him write it down “Okay, next question. Are you named after anyone?”

“My grandfather and my godfather.” He pushed up the cuffs of his shirt. “Although, when I was little, I thought I was named after Max from
Where the Wild Things Are
.”

I smirked at the idea of Max being anything like Max from the children’s book. Highly unlikely. Max Watson was more “volunteer tutor” than “king of all wild things.”

“What about you? Are you named after anyone?”

“My parents just liked the name Paige, I think, but Elizabeth is because my mom is a huge
Pride and Prejudice
fan.” I thought for a second. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that, actually.”

His head jerked toward me. “Really?”

“Yeah. Guess it never came up. Elizabeth is a pretty standard middle name.”

“No,” he said. “I mean really ‘Elizabeth’? You seem much more like a Jane Bennet.”

My jaw dropped in offense. “That’s kind of mean!”

“No, it’s not! Jane is deeply underappreciated.”

“Because she’s
boring
,” I said, surprised at how much this bothered me.

“As opposed to Elizabeth, who judges everyone?”

“Elizabeth is smart! She’s … a critical thinker!”

“Jane is also smart. She’s just not critical of other people. And she has much better taste in men.”

“Now you’re insulting Mr. Darcy?” I sat back in my chair, arms crossed. “Well,
this
should be interesting.”

“He’s mean and moody.”

“He’s misunderstood,” I said. “He has a good heart.”

“
Bingley
has a good heart.” He laughed, apparently not realizing that his volume was now significantly above the general buzz of our classmates.

I opened my mouth for a counterargument, but people were starting to look at us—because we were heatedly and publicly disagreeing about Jane Austen.
Not
winning any cool points here. So I mumbled, “I
guess
.”

“I’m sorry,” he conceded. “I meant it as a compliment. Jane’s quiet and kind, you know.”

My cheeks flushed, and I looked down at my paper, wondering if they taught awkward, literature-based flattery at the Coventry School.

“Childhood nicknames, whether endearing or mean,” I recited from the page.

Max stayed silent. He cleared his throat and averted my glance.

“None,” he said, but his voice was too high.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“You first.”

“Okay …” I would definitely be omitting Grammar Girl. “I don’t really have any. Oh, except my dad calls me Paiger. I kind of hate it, but he calls everyone by nicknames. Also, my last name’s Hancock, so … there were never
nicknames
with that. But plenty of jokes involving the second syllable.”

Max laughed a little. “You can probably guess mine. It may or may not be related to a feminine hygiene product.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Maxi-pad?”

“Oh yeah.” He grinned ruefully. “Thanks, older kids on the bus. But that nickname faded off before junior high, at which point it was replaced with ‘nerd.’ ”

I stifled the smile that wanted to creep onto my face. It was sort of endearing how comfortable Max seemed with
the nerd label. He glanced back down at the page and read, “Are there any names that have negative connotations for you and why?”

“Ugh.” I made a face. “Yes. Chrissie.”

He wrote it down. “Why?”

“Chrissie Cohen was my next-door neighbor, and she antagonized me every day until she moved away.”

“Antagonized you how?”

“She mocked me for reading on the bus, mostly.”

“Well,” he said. “If we’re talking about bullies’ names, I have at least a dozen you can write in. Mike, Brandon, Clark—”

My head snapped up. “Clark Driscoll?”

“Yeah,” Max said. “Biggest jerk to me. Made gym class total hell.”

I’d never understood Aaron’s friendship with Clark, which Aaron summarized as “I don’t know. We’ve been best friends since we were in diapers.” Where Aaron’s sense of humor was goofy, Clark’s had a meanness that overstepped teasing. He didn’t talk to me a lot when I was going out with Aaron, and even less after he died. I noticed him in the hallway, though—the way he stared down at the floor these days. When he did make eye contact, he’d say, “Hey, Paige” in this defeated voice. He’d lost weight in the past year, the round curve of his face diminishing to a defined jawline. But he didn’t look healthier for it. He
looked withered, like a plant away from sunlight. I worried about him at a distance, afraid that I had no right to talk to him about our shared loss. His loss was so much greater.

“Paige?” Max’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“Yeah? Sorry. What did you say?”

“Do you want to move on to the next section?”

“Sure,” I said, affecting a false smile that drooped right back down. Part of me wanted to know if Aaron had ever been there when Clark bullied Max. I knew he’d never contribute, but I hoped that, even in middle school, he wouldn’t have stood by and watched. “Yes.”

We went through the section on surname origins and their implications, then a section on pet names, where I learned that Max once had a guinea pig named Milo, after the main character in
The Phantom Tollbooth
.

“So,” Max said, after we’d finished the last item on the worksheet. “Have you decided about QuizBowl?”

“Well, I had a few questions. I, um … actually don’t even know who the other people on the team are.”

“Oh. Malcolm Park, who’s in our grade. He’s awesome—you’ll like him. We’ve been friends since before I left for Coventry. The other is Lauren Mathers. She’s a senior.”

I knew who Malcolm was, but not Lauren. And that wasn’t my only concern. “So, is there … a bus?”

“A bus?”

“Well, we stay after school for matches, right? And travel to away meets?”

“Oh,” he said. “It’s only the four of us, so we just drive.”

My cheeks flashed with heat. “Well, I don’t have a car, so that might be a problem.”

“I can drive you. No problem.”

With Ryan Chase sitting a few seats away, I still felt torn. Maybe QuizBowl would help me get to know Max, and therefore Ryan. But maybe it would be social suicide.
Beginner’s mind
, I repeated to myself. No more maybes. “Then okay.”

“Wait, seriously?” Max’s eyebrows shot up above the dark frame of his glasses. “You’ll do it?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Wrap it up!” Ms. Pepper called. “We need to talk about starting
Hamlet
tomorrow.”

“Awesome!” Max continued. “We’re having one practice next Sunday, just to get team strategy clear before matches start. So, do you want to come over a little early? We can go over game structure and that kind of thing?”

“I guess. Sure.”

“Quiet, people!” Ms. Pepper said. “It’s Bard time. Your favorite time.”

I turned back around, settling in for the remainder of class. A few minutes later, I stifled a gasp as something brushed the back of my arm. It was Max’s hand, tossing a
note onto my desk. The note was folded into a tiny paper airplane, impossibly small and precise. Inside, he’d written his address and the time 6:00 p.m. I folded the airplane back up and flicked it gently, watching it spin like a compass needle gone awry. It only took three tries until the plane pointed toward Ryan Chase.

At the end of the week, I found myself walking in the same direction as Max after class.

“What happened to your fingers?” he asked.

I glanced down at the two burn marks. “Hot-glue gun. I was making something for my best friend’s birthday. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I’m smart,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “When we were little, my dad took us to the Renaissance Fair, and we got these flower crowns. We wore them for
months
, I swear. I don’t know what happened to mine, but I made us new ones for her birthday.”

“Tessa, right?” Max asked. “She’s your best friend? We sit together at lunch.”

“Yeah.” That made sense, since I knew she’d been sitting with Ryan Chase.

“She was talking nonstop yesterday about eating at whatever restaurant tomorrow.”

“Barrett House?” I asked, laughing. “Yeah. Her parents
are taking us. She’s been dying to eat there since it opened and already has every course picked out. She, uh … likes food.”